Woeful Inadequacies
by DBack47
Summary: Clockwork watched as the barely visible mist seeped through his front door and began to float through his front hallway. It was hard to see that the mist was possibly the most crucial person that Clockwork had run into yet, and close to his equal in power


AUTHOR's NOTE: _I hope you pick up on my meaning and moral to this story, please review. _

_Dedicated to those of us who can't see the silver lining_

. ….

"Let's see here, your ACT score is 19, your overall GPA is a 1.9, and you don't have any extracurricular going for you, You can apply to Tay degrees school and…well let's see here"

Danny felt his eyelids drooping as Mr. Anders looked over Danny's high school portfolio and compared it to a chart of colleges that would accept him. It wasn't that Danny had stayed up that late…just bad sleep. It seemed as if even when Danny wasn't fighting ghost his body would not let him pass off to blissful sleep that easily, perhaps that was just another side effect of Danny leading a double life.

"Danny…come on back to the world of the living" Mr. Anders looked over his thick spectacles to scrutinize the exhausted boy, seeing his thick dark rings that were highly prominent under his eyes. "Danny, please pay some attention to me, it's important to go to college"

Danny wrenched his eye lids open "What…oh yeah, college"

He had never considered the implications of spending so much time fighting hard, never had he even given a second thought to the long procession of F's and D's that made a seemingly never ending procession of disappointed teachers and upset parents. Danny now could only close his eyes and try to ignore the cruel realities of the world.

"Mr. Fenton, I think it is safe enough to say that…this is a woefully inadequate portfolio you have assembled here, and I will have to set up a conference with your parents too…"

"Yeah, I know Mr. Anders; condemn my efforts and make empty offers of going to some workshop for troubled kids, I know the drill, been there, done that" Danny interrupted, not once raising his eyes back to his counselor

Mr. Anders leaned over the desk, his spectacles sliding slightly down his nose, his eyes filled with something that could only be called a combination between exasperation and sympathy. "Danny, don't you want to graduate high school, do you have any plans for the rest of your life, do you hold yourself in such high confidence that you believe that life will come prepared to you on a silver platter or are you just a pessimist"

In the several other situations that Danny had underwent that went along these same lines, Danny had left at this point, but the fiery core within his brain, long having been exhausted from years of stress and ghost fights, gave out and something kept Danny glued to that miserable wooden chair that he sat on

"I…guess…just a pessimist Mr. Anders, I don't have any other way to explain it, besides the fact that you don't know what my life is like"

Mr. Anders let out an enormous sigh and turned his chair away from Danny, rubbing the sides of his balding head. "Danny…you're not making the my job easy at all…don't you have any higher aspirations than this rudimentary schooling you receive at Casper High, don't you have something that you always wanted to be?"

"Well…I wanted to be an astronaut for a while but that's over the waterfall by this time" Danny murmured and let out a exhausted sigh, his heart sinking as he recalled those ancient dreams that were so long forgotten and doomed. He remembered years past when he had imagined blasting off in a space ship, reaching for the stars and doing the impossible. Of course, such dreams had been conceptualized long before Danny had even heard of the ghost portal.

Mr. Anders turned his swivel chair back towards Danny, arms folded and face with a fatigued look. "Mr. Fenton, do you want to go to college at all?"

….

It was nearly second nature for Danny to simply vanish from the visible spectrum. It was almost natural for Danny to close his eyes and reach in to the back of his mind to touch that cold spot and feel as the matter that composed his tired body was metamorphosed into pure energy. It was actually more comforting to feel many of his human feelings of a corporal body dissolve into the recesses of his mind and feel like a free spirit. For Danny, his spectral side represented the escape from the reality of it all, his form of suicide into a creature of impossibility.

Tucker was going to MIT, Sam was going to some Big Ten University, Jazz was at Columbia working on a PhD in psychology, Vlad was a multi-billionaire, Valerie was going to an in-state university, and even Paulina had received a scholar ship to become some sort of supermodel. Dash was going to become a football star, Kwan a replacement for the football team at another university and all Danny had was…

Danny looked down at his gloved fingers and worked them back and forth. A strand of silver ethereal hair fell into his face. He had everything and nothing at the same time, he had the ability to escape to his own little world where he was all powerful, but he had nothing left for him in his human life, his grades were essentially in a waste basket, his prospects of going to college at all seemed to be more impossible than him learning how to control time, his parents seemed disenchanted after working excessively to try to assist him, his…

Danny let his body become a true spirit as it dissolved away into a mist that began to float, without control over his own motion, and slowly work its way out of the cursed high school that represented everything that Danny detested.

No, it wasn't good enough to become a spirit. Danny reformed his ghostly body and mentally willed energy to pour to his fingertips when he tore a hole in reality. Danny had learned the trick a while ago and by now the drain of energy it caused seemed negligible. Danny opened his eyes, the irises dimmer than usual, and saw his own personal ghost portal, waiting to take him to another dimension, the swirling green energies of the other dimension seeming to beckon him in.

Danny once again released his mind and the feeling of having any existence at all nearly fell away as his body became a mist and floated into the ghost zone. He was nearly invisible, a wisp of smoke to anyone who looked at him, even a ghost.

Danny had discovered, over the years that the number of ghosts actually in the ghost zone was staggering, but most of them were inert and inactive. Most of them slept, a endless sleep where their mind shut down and they floated for millenniums around the ghost zone or in a personal lair, only awaking to see if anything drastic had changed and then returning to sleep, reminding Danny of the sloth, a mammal that slept all week in trees only to awake occasionally to do the most necessary tasks. What was most disturbing fact of all was that Danny had found he could fall into this endless sleep too. Now more than ever was he tempted to let it all go and sleep for the next thousand years till nothing remained of his earthly connections.

But that was the depressing thing, the ghost zone, was the ultimate cul-de sac; an existence with no possible way to advance or have purpose. You simply existed, on and on.

…..

Clockwork watched as the barely visible mist seeped through his front door and began to float through his front hallway. It was hard to see that the mist was possibly the most crucial person that Clockwork had run into yet, and that it was close to his equal in power. The age old spirit felt sympathetic for the young boy, so young and so discouraged. What that mist could not see was the time displays that depicted a human Danny, cradling a child, or Phantom being an ambassador between two worlds, or a carefree Danny holding hands with Sam at the top of hill watching the sunset. Nor could the mist realize the great need the world had for him, the great purpose that he would serve.

Clockwork smiled mysteriously as he planted a mental thought in the mist's intellect to return to Amity Park and look at acceptance to the few colleges he could go too. With a wave of his hand, the mist vanished, having been teleported back to his home and his bed, where the boy would receive sorely needed rest.

Clockwork looked behind him and saw another view screen, of a man with a revolver to his head, rotating the 6 bullet barrels till the firing hammer would strike at the firing cap of the one bullet in the revolver and send a small bit of steel at several hundred miles per-hour to puncture the skull and cause catastrophic damage to the incredible human brain. The scene changed to a girl, teetering on the edge of a cliff, looking far down to the sharp rocks below, contemplating attempting to ignore the consequences of trying to defy gravity and ending her life with so much potential.

Clockwork felt himself be pulled through a self made portal to Danny's bedroom. The exhausted 18 year old breathed deeply in sleep on his bed. Clockwork walked over and stroked the boy's dark hair before putting his hand on Danny's head.

The boy relaxed in his sleep and a smile, rare for Danny, crossed his face as Clockwork implanted soothing thoughts.

"Life…so precious my dear friend, and yet so many willing to take it away from others or themselves. Every person and ghost serves a purpose; even the lowliest of the human race plays a crucial role in the timeline…if only you could see that."

Clockwork leaned lower and now whispered into Danny's ear "Danny, always look at things in perspective, rarely are things so bleak that giving up is a good option. There are other forces at work here besides evil and good, you would be wise to be mindful of them, and never ever give up on life"

Clockwork opened up his own portal and began to leave, only to look back over his shoulders back at the sleeping boy. "Good night Danny…sweet dreams"

…..


End file.
